Why can't I delete my old text messages?

I am having the same problem. My iMessage works fine until I try to delete any of my messages. Once I delete them, they go away, but Facetime cuts itself off - which disables the iMessage. Then I have to reboot to get it to work again, but the texts reappear! HELP! This is so frustrating!

I have a 32GB iPhone 5s, am running the most current iOS (8.1.3)

None of the above steps actually accomplish PERMANENTLY DELETING OLD MESSAGES! I have over 8 GB of iMessage text messages. I have tried every suggested method of delete, from one at a time swiping, to "edit" , highlight and delete. It works in the moment, and LOOKS deleted, but doesn't actually REMOVE the messages. iMessage locks up often, then I am forced to reboot my phone. When I reboot, all messages back to 2013 are BACK ON MY PHONE!

I found a great app, and actually paid $35 to try to fix this! It allowed me to see and copy the old text and voice messages that I did want to keep. That's awesome, and I have saved to my desktop computer the files I want. Unfortunately this program doesn't have (apple) permission to delete the files.

Soooo......

I have set the "keep messages" function to only 30 days. There are STILL messages all the way back to early 2013.

I read that I needed to delete, then SYNC w/my iTunes to make them permanently go away. NOPE. THEY COME BACK.

I have done a complete restore, hoping it was just some bug, that would get cleaned out in the process. NOPE. THEY COME BACK.

In the meantime, functionality is HORRIBLE due to the fact that the app is over filled.

Someone please give me a real suggestion. PLEASE. I will be forever grateful.

The same to ALL of this...I had the problem, got a new phone...same problem. Does anyone from apple ever offer a solution on these forums? I'm losing my patience rapidly with this rebooting nonsense I'm forced to do 10-15 times per day.

To delete old text messages automatically:

1. Go to Settings --> Messages.
2. Scroll down to Message History. Here, you can choose to delete all messages older than 30 days, or all messages older than a year old.
3. Confirm that you want to delete the old messages and attachments.

Yeah apple needs to wake up...... this has been an ongoing problem for me and it really *****. APPLLLLEEEEE get your S**** together!~!!!

I have the same problem trying to get rid of old text messages. If no one responds to this original post, I'll post a new question. If a solution is posted, I'll also post here.

Hi Try a Reboot press hold power button menu button hold both down until you see Apple Logo. Text messages are managed by your Network provider if you still have problems contact them. Cheers Brian

@mjshaffer99

@asianthang98

I have the solution. Go to the person who sent you the text messages. In the conversation, delete a few of the messages that they sent you, then close the App. This should correct the problem. I just had the same problem with the App showing I had 17 unread messages, and now its back to normal. Best of luck!

the exact same "everything you said" @marco67red! every single thing. i'm so frustrated.

I have exactly the same problem. As a result, iMessage is horrible and FaceTime seems to freeze on log in. I've tried everything in the suggestions, but now I have a pretty useless iPhone as I have to do reset it a few times a day just to kick start iMessage. HELP :-)

ok so I solved the problem that is being addressed in this post. someone here mentioned something about "memory" so that got me thinking.

so I backed up my iphone to my Mac. deleted ALL the music from my iphone and freed up like 6+ gigs of space. then i began deleting.

just one text message first (I chose the one with the longest threads and with lots of photos). I let the phone sit on the charger over night and do it's thing. The next morning, the message was gone and so I went for one more message. I did this just one at a time making sure that Text Messaging continued to work. Within a day - Voila all text messages were deleted!

That was over a week ago and today I synced my Iphone adding back my music. Then I tried to delete a current text and it worked perfectly.

I'm not sure if this will help the rest of you but I sure hope it does. I'm so happy I've finally solved this problem.

I had the same issue. After the recent update, I wasn't able to delete anything without my phone crashing. When I restarted my phone, everything I deleted would come back. I tried everything recommended on here, and nothing worked so I called Apple. Turns out, I had a bug stuck in my back-ups so every time I wiped my phone and restored from a back-up, the problem would come back. You need to reset your phone, and then restore as if it was a new phone- not from a back-up. It's a bit of a pain to re-load all your apps and settings, but it solved the problem. I was as frustrated as all of you!

So you had to basically start from scratch with a new phone? No keychain? No contacts? Downloading the apps again is a pain but replacing all of my contacts will likely be impossible.

Same exact thing is happening to me! I have restored my phone multiple times. I've changed my network settings.. anything and everything people tell me to do. But I still can't delete my text messages under 30 days. I constantly have to restart my phone 10x+ times a day because it freezes on messages. Every time I try to delete an entire convo it freezes and then I have to restart and boom they're back!

Please let me know if anyone has found the solution to this.

I am having the same issue. I have text messages from like january 2014 still logged into my phone and whenever I try to delete them it freezes and forces me to restart my phone, wherein ALL my texts comes back to my phone. I have been through 3 phones and the same thing happens. I have reset my phone, and restarted it and manually restored from my laptop and I am having the same issue. I went to Verizon (my provider) and they dont' know what to do anymore either. Anyone been to the Genius bar or apple store to solve this!? I have like over 4G of JUST TEXTS....Seriously this wouldn't be an issue if Steve Jobs were still alive.

I have an iphone 6 16G